Ch. 209 The People at the Table

Chapter 209: The People at the Table

The morning after Garrick Valewood’s birthday, Mary returned the pantheon agreement to Aurelia with six questions written in the margin.

Aurelia read them at breakfast.

“Who hears a complaint against a god?” she said.

“Still that one,” I replied.

“Who may bring it. Where the account is kept. Whether the person complained about must answer. What happens while the complaint is considered. And who decides what follows.”

Melody looked at Mary.

“You turned one question into six.”

“It was already six.”

Carol reached for the page.

Mary lifted it.

Our daughter said, “No,” in Mary’s voice.

Garrick Valewood laughed into his tea.

We invited people who worked at the chapel, the gate, and the new road to discuss the draft.

Mary chose the hall because the council chamber would not hold them all.

I arrived early and found her arranging chairs.

“Evelyn asked for fewer chairs on her birthday,” I said.

“This is a meeting.”

“That has never stopped you from giving me papers.”

“It will not stop me today either.”

She handed me copies.

At the top of each was the line Nathaniel had suggested.

Any person may seek a place among us.

Beneath it, Mary had left space for changes.

Liora arrived with Ilyen. Eliza brought two guards, one of whom had been at the western gate when Veyra came.

The daughter whose house would stand beside the new chapel sat near Eleanor. Aldren and Perrin came from the building site with mud on their boots.

Maelin, Thesra, Caldris, Nara, Nathaniel, Sel, Dorian, Ivara, and Veyra took seats among them.

Aurelia looked around the hall.

“We would like to hear where this agreement fails you,” she said.

Liora raised a hand.

“You’ve called it an agreement among gods. Why are we being asked to read it?”

“Because you’ll have to live with what we agree to,” Aurelia answered.

“Good,” Liora said. “That was my first question.”

The young guard pointed to the line about complaints.

“Would I bring one to Mary?”

“You could,” Mary said.

“What if the complaint were about something she had recorded?”

“Then the account should be kept by someone else.”

“Who?”

Mary looked at her page.

“We haven’t answered that.”

Eleanor leaned back in her chair.

“There should be more than one person hearing it.”

“One god and one mortal?” Caldris suggested.

“Two mortals,” Liora said. “If a god is involved, they can speak when asked.”

Caldris considered.

“That seems fair.”

Thesra wrote it down.

The meeting lasted through the midday bell.

We stopped so people could eat and returned to find more questions waiting.

Could someone seek care in Aurelia’s chapel while bringing a complaint against her?

“Yes,” Evelyn said at once.

Would the complaint change where that person lived?

“No,” I said.

Could a god ask to leave before answering it?

Nathaniel looked at Aurelia.

“We said anyone may leave.”

“And we can still keep a record of what happened,” Mary said. “Leaving does not make the account vanish.”

Ivara nodded slowly.

“I wish the Hall had written that.”

Near the end, Sel asked whether the agreement could promise anything beyond Greykeep.

“We cannot make every town follow our rules,” I said.

“Then say where they apply,” she replied. “People should know when they enter or leave your keeping.”

Nathaniel made a small sound.

“We could ask whether they want to be in it at all.”

He looked at Mary’s first line.

“Maybe we still have the question backward.”

Aurelia rested her hands on the table.

“Then we’ll take another day.”

No one objected.

Mary gathered pages covered in notes.

When Melody offered to help, she handed her half the stack.

“That was too easy,” Melody said.

“I have more in the council chamber.”

The chapel foundation had grown while we argued.

Eleanor had laid stones along two sides. The outline of the treatment room was clear enough to walk into.

Evelyn stood inside it when I found her.

“Do you have enough space?” I asked.

“For a bed and a clean table. Perhaps two beds.”

“Only perhaps?”

“Until Eleanor sets the interior wall.”

I called to Eleanor.

“Evelyn wants to move a wall.”

“I know,” Eleanor called back.

“She hasn’t asked you.”

“She stood in the same place for ten minutes looking at it.”

Evelyn looked offended.

“Eight.”

Eleanor came over with a measuring cord.

We moved the wall a little.

That made the teaching room smaller.

Liora came out from the old chapel, looked at the stakes, and asked why.

Evelyn explained.

“Then move this door,” Liora said.

Perrin fetched another stake.

By the time we finished, every room still fit, though the passage between them had taken a turn.

“Will people find their way through it?” I asked.

“They’ll follow the sound of the lesson,” Ilyen said.

“And if they want the treatment room?” Liora asked.

“We’ll put up a sign.”

Perrin marked where it could hang.

In the afternoon, I went beneath the eastern wall with the Castellan.

He had finished repairing the third branch and wanted Evelyn and Aurelia to inspect it before we changed my contribution.

I held the working where it usually rested.

Evelyn traced it toward the inner court.

Then she followed another line upward.

“That reaches the nursery,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Didn’t we find no movement toward it before?”

“We did. I’m looking at what might happen if the supply grows beyond the amount we’ve tested.”

She touched a narrow connection.

“This one carries warmth through the rooms above. It shares the wall, though it has a separate source.”

“Could my power reach it?”

“Perhaps, if we strengthened the ward without changing the connection.”

The Castellan made a mark on his plan.

“We will separate them first.”

I thought of the frost on the basin.

Garrick and Carol slept above us on some afternoons, blankets kicked aside.

“How did we miss it?”

“We hadn’t asked the wall to carry enough for the lines to touch,” the Castellan said.

“We’re asking now.”

“Yes.”

I looked at his plan.

“Can you separate them?”

“Evelyn can. I can change the fitting afterward.”

Evelyn glanced at me.

“We’ll do it together. After we finish tracing the rest.”

I wanted the work done immediately.

She knew.

“I need to see every line before I lift one,” she said.

“All right.”

That evening, I helped Helena give the children supper.

Carol had learned to carry her cup with both hands. She insisted on demonstrating.

A little water spilled on the table.

“Good,” Helena told her.

“There was water outside the cup,” I said.

“There was more inside.”

Garrick reached for Carol’s cup.

He had his own.

“Yours,” Helena said, pointing to it.

“No.”

“Yes.”

The cup nearest him slid an inch across the table.

He caught it and laughed.

I checked beneath both cups.

Neither had moved far enough to spill.

Helena looked at me.

“Your face is making them curious.”

“I thought it was making them cautious.”

“Have you met them?”

After supper, Garrick Valewood joined us.

He brought a letter from the household manager at Valewood.

She had answered the questions Evelyn asked about succession. She was willing to continue managing the estate and wanted the families there to know who would speak for them when a matter reached Greykeep.

Evelyn read the letter twice.

“She asks whether I can visit before winter.”

“Can you?” her father asked.

“Yes. If the chapel has someone to teach while I’m gone.”

“Ilyen does,” I said.

“And Liora could help if she’s here,” Evelyn added.

Garrick nodded.

“Then we’ll choose a day together.”

Carol climbed into his lap.

He set the letter out of her reach.

The next morning, Ivara brought Mary a dry copy of the road account from the house at the crossroads.

She and Nathaniel had spread the damaged pages beneath light cloth overnight. One name had become easier to read.

I found them in the archive.

“Is it hers?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” Ivara said.

The entry named the person who had paid for the cart.

Not the woman who rode in it.

Maelin came to look.

She recognized the name as a clerk who had worked in Othellos’s office.

“He told me the petitioner withdrew,” Nathaniel said.

“Then we know where one part of the story came from,” Mary replied.

“Can we speak to him?”

“Perhaps,” Maelin said. “I heard he left the court.”

Mary opened a fresh page for his last known location.

Aurelia found me outside the archive afterward.

“You look disappointed,” she said.

“We have another name. It still isn’t hers.”

“Sometimes one name leads to another.”

“I know.”

She walked beside me toward the lower training chamber.

“Evelyn showed me the connection near the nursery,” she said.

“We’ll change it?”

“Yes. After she finishes examining the lines above it.”

“She told me.”

“You’re impatient.”

“Yes.”

“I would be too.”

That helped more than being told to wait.

Caldris had opened Perrin’s practice door to its fourth mark.

A strip of cloth hung on each side.

My task was to let the air move through while keeping both strips in place.

For several breaths, I managed.

Then Thesra called from the passage.

The cloth on my side lifted.

I held it.

A second call came from farther away.

I knew Aurelia stood beside me. I could see Caldris by the door.

The other call was unfamiliar.

I let it touch the edge of my attention.

“Someone at the gate,” I said.

Veyra, seated near the window, listened.

“Yes.”

The cloth remained where it was.

We closed the door and went to see who had arrived.

It was a messenger from Southmere with a letter for Evelyn.

Liora’s healer had sent word that two people from her village planned to come for lessons when the new chapel opened.

“They can come before then,” Evelyn told the messenger.

“I’ll tell them.”

“They needn’t wait for the building.”

He nodded.

Mary asked him to stay for a meal before riding back.

He accepted.

I looked at the gate, then at Thesra.

“That wasn’t you calling.”

“No.”

“Did you know who it was?”

“I felt someone asking whether this was the right place.”

The messenger overheard.

“I did ask the guard.”

“He heard you from the training room,” Thesra told him.

The messenger looked impressed.

I thought of the cloth hanging still on either side of the practice door.

So was I.

That night, Mary came to our room with the revised pantheon pages.

She had written the objections from the hall beneath the draft.

“Will they agree?” I asked.

“They will have to read it again.”

“How many times?”

“Until people can tell what they are agreeing to.”

Evelyn, writing in Carol’s book, looked up.

“That could take a while.”

“Yes,” Mary said.

She did not sound troubled.

The twins were asleep.

I carried the pages to the table and began reading.

Outside, the watch changed at the western post. Beyond the walls, the road ran south toward a house where someone had once been told her choice no longer mattered.

We still did not know her name.

For the moment, we had learned to ask who had spoken for her.